If the negro slaves of the West Indies exhibit moral, mental, and physical merit in advance of most of Dr. Channing’s countrymen, who were never in slavery, we beg to know how it is accounted for; what are the causes that have operated to produce it? For we believe no sane man, who knows any thing of the African savage in his native state, whether bond or free, will so much as give a hint that they are as elevated in any respect as are _his_ countrymen, the people of New England. Will the fact then be acknowledged, that slavery, however bad, does yet constitutionally amend and elevate the African savage! * * * * * At the moment the foregoing paragraphs were placed on paper, there happened to be present a Northern gentleman, who very justly entertained the most elevated regard for the personal character of Dr. Channing, to whom they were read. His views seemed to be that the extracts from Channing were _garbled_, and the deductions consequent thereon unjustly severe. We war not with Dr. Channing, nor his character. He no longer liveth. But his works live, and new editions crowd upon the public attention, as if his disciples were anxious to saturate the whole world with his errors, as well as to make known his many virtues. We do not design to garble; and therefore requote the extract more fully, from vol. vi. pp. 50, 51: “The history of the West India emancipation teaches us that we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family. The negro is among the mildest, gentlest of men. He is singularly susceptible of improvement from abroad. His children, it is said, receive more rapidly than ours the elements of knowledge. How far he can originate improvements, time only can teach. His nature is affectionate, easily touched; and hence he is more open to religious impression than the white man. The European race have manifested more courage, enterprise, invention; but in the dispositions which Christianity particularly honours, how inferior are they to the African! When I cast my eyes over our Southern region, the land of bowie-knives, Lynch-law, and duels, of ‘chivalry, honour,’ and revenge; and when I consider that Christianity is declared to be a spirit of charity, ‘which seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and endureth all things,’ and is declared to be ‘the wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits,’—can I hesitate in deciding to which of the races in that land Christianity is most adapted, in which its noblest disciples are most likely to be reared.”